Microsoft admits 'frontier models can't be trusted', unveils new security tools to treat AI agents as insider threats

Microsoft unveils Guardian Agents to monitor, constrain, and manage risks posed by autonomous AI agents New controls dynamically adjust agent permissions, behavior, and access based on changing risk levels Company warns “agentic insiders” require continuous AI-driven oversight beyond traditional security controls AI fans, your vocabulary is about to become two phrases richer: Agentic Insider, and Guardian Agent.

These are the two phrases Microsoft used while announcing a swathe of new tools and features to help businesses secure their operations running AI agents.

A new Microsoft blog , published by Microsoft's Corporate VP for Identity and Network Access, Nadim Abdo, argues that agents, while not inherently malicious, can make mistakes or be manipulated and compromised.

Since they need to be granted relatively extensive permissions in order to be able to work properly, it creates the sort of risk that can prove disastrous if not properly handled.

Agentic Overwatch Abdo also added that AI agents doing their master's bidding cannot be trusted with their own security.

"Satya Nadella, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Microsoft, recently described the trust architecture this new era requires: we must separate the supply of intelligence from the authority over it," Abdo writes.

"We should not ask a model to be its own security authority.

The controls that determine what it can access, what actions it can take, and whether it should continue operating must sit outside the model, where the model cannot bypass or tamper with them." So, oversight is the keyword here.

But AI agents move at machine speed, something no human can match, and therefore humans are not properly equipped for the job.

Instead, separate AI agents need to be introduced to keep their juniors in check.

Earlier, Microsoft introduced Project Perception and the Microsoft cyber stack, to help organizations defend with agents.

Project Perception is an AI-powered cybersecurity system designed to coordinate specialized AI agents that analyze security data, identify vulnerabilities, and investigate different threats.

The system uses three types of agents: red agents that probe for weaknesses, blue agents that investigate potential threats, and green agents that implement corrections and fixes.

Now, Microsoft says it is extending the project to secure “the agentic insider”.